Major Nelson posted a note on his blog a few hours ago stating that the remaining maps from the Multiplayer Map Pack will be free to all Xbox Live subscribers by 5 pm ET today (that’s in 10 minutes) – if you haven’t grabbed ’em yet, go get ’em now! Thanks, Mintz.

Over on Slate, there’s an article called ‘The Gaming Graybeards‘ – a pair of thirtysomethings give Halo 2 on Xbox Live a try (I think they were both totally new to the game AND the service, though one continued AFTER that first session), and write about their experiences. Alternately funny and excruciatingly painful.

2old2play cranks out the news today – Episode 8 (with coverage, to some degree, of the Xbox360) is now available for download, and they’re gearing up for Episode 9, which will feature Xbox.com’s Major Nelson (you can submit questions ahead of time). They’ve also written up an article reviewing Apple’s iPod and providing a tutorial for using iTunes to subscribe to the 2old2type podcast. Go visit and learn.

Hong Kong Soupy points out an article on Zondaro.net about what it takes to interface with a fan community. The Bungie.net website is held up as a great example of what a developer can do to keep their fans coming back. (HKS was a little annoyed that fansites were left out of this equation entirely… but then, the market for the article was originally developers – and developers don’t run fansites.)

Ducain has posted his own writeup of the Suffer THIS! LAN held at Chez Chavez this weekend. Pictures, impressions, and the occasional unnecessary dig at a teammate who made an honest mistake… a great read.

Red vs Blue Episode 58 has officially kicked off Season 4 – it’s now online for both sponsors (in Hi-res) and the general public (in low-res). Caboose is smarter than he looks. (Not much, but…) And Tucker… Tucker shows his true colors. 4:22, a great start to the season. 10 – 43.5 mb, depending on flavor.

These guys are nuts. (I admire their sticktoitiveness, but man… I wouldn’t have had the patience. Life’s too short – I’d rather be playing games I LIKE.)

Dennis Powers writes that the Halo CE Chronicles Episode 17 – Prelude – has been posted. The search and rescue team looking for our Station Commander is about to come under attack from well-armed Covenant forces… the stage is set for some great action. Qucktime (20 mb), WMP9 (22 mb), or streaming Flash (8 mb) formats, all downloadable from the video archive.

Mercury has weighed in with his own opinion on the recent 1Up article – you can find his thoughts on The Oracle, his blog. I guess the 1Up writer did it right, after all – I can’t remember the last time an article there got this much of the fan community up in arms.

As has been mentioned a few times recently, a lengthy LANfest (6 days now, sort of, and counting) has been going on involving some community regulars. The first real writeup got posted to our forum a little bit ago – Stuntmutt, taking a page from Tolstoy’s playbook, wrote a monster of a reminiscence of the trip so far. (I must say, I’ve been maligned. Possibly justifiably… but maligned nonetheless. Pistols at dawn, sir.) It’s a great read, whether you were there or not – it sums up some of the high points of the event really nicely. (Pisses me off – he nailed pretty much every single point I wanted to cover in my OWN writeup. I may just have to admin his post and put my name on it.) Check it out.

Today’s One One Se7en suggests a feasible way for certain Halo clans to make a little money. Go, Helljumpers.

Twelve new stories posted today in the Fan Fiction section – busy weekend for the writers! Go read.

Remember Briar’s Armor? (We’ve mentioned them a few times.) The Master Chief armor is finished – and tonight we got a pair of images in our inbox. Gorgeous work! Full body shot (343K) | closeup (296K)

3Suns sent in a roundup of pro-level Halo news articles from around the net:

• From Team3D.net – Ogre 2 won a car playing Halo 2
• From HaloPro.com – Team 3D’s Hotshy (Walshy) interviewed
• From Team3D.com – Team 3D won VGL regional NY a few weeks ago
• From MLGPro.com – IGS Monglers take first at MLG Nashville

Some of these might be a bit old – but they’re all unreported here.

Podtacular Episode 6 has been posted – 90 minutes long, highlight is an interview with Overswarm, the author of the Not So Common Sense strategy guide hosted right here. Thanks, henry brown.

Last night, Ename Nep pointed out an article over at 1Up.com, entitled ‘Broken Halo: Five ways Bungie can fix Halo 2’. It’s nothing that hasn’t been said a thousand times before on Halo forums the whole ‘net round… what makes this somewhat surprising is the fact that it shows up, in this form, on a site like 1Up. (I’ll say right now that my respect for their journalistic integrity has dropped a notch or two because of this article.) It’s full of absurd absolute statements (“Since the rockets on Coagulation don’t respawn when someone is holding them, the Banshee pilot (unless he’s maladroit) is invincible”) and faulty logic (“Because there is a singular power weapon on Colossus with no counterpart, even shoddily organized teams can get a beam rifle, use it to get a fast lead, and then hold the beam rifle with a couple shots left in it for the rest of the round and use their lead to win”) – it’s so strident in its tired arguments that even the decent suggestions (I liked the idea of retaining Halo’s plasma pistol overheating-after-an-overcharge feature, which would have toned down the hard-to-counter PP/BR combo) are lost in the rhetoric. Cody Miller pointed to a Slashdot poster’s summary of this article that nailed the problem quite nicely.

Last month, we mentioned a helmet being created by corpseguy – I noticed today over at HaloPlanet that he’s posted a bunch of photos of the finished product. It looks great! Check it out.

A message came in yesterday morning that got missed – Gamecloud has coverage from the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle; you’ll be able to watch the episode of Red vs Blue that showed there Friday night (and at Lincoln Center in New York a week ago) at RvB’s site tomorrow, but today you can read about the discussion that was held after the showing. Additionally, there are a few photo galleries from the Expo (here, here, and here) – only a small portion is Halo-related, but you can get a good flavor for the goings-on. Thanks, John Callaham.

Two different montages (both hosted over at halo2forum.com) were posted on our forum today – SWAT Halo69’s 7th Montage and Halzred’s Montage 3. They just keep coming…

We’ve mentioned the Twin Galaxies Legendary Run competition a couple of times before – yesterday, Cody Miller posted on our forum that he’d completed the challenge: Halo 2 on Legendary, with no deaths. All I can say is… wow. Read his post for details.